Dream Boy
by Stephane Richer
Summary: here they are real and here they remember everything and here he will never let this boy go


Dream Boy

Disclaimer: don't own

Notes: Day 11 of the 30 Day Cheesy Tropes Challenge by ghiraher on tumblr: meet in a dream

* * *

The sunlight streams through the fog like something out of a poem or a perfectly-done movie; this is unreal but Tatsuya feels unreal; his feet are too light on the dewy grass and he can't remember anything other than feelings of deep sorrow and agitation. His knuckles are swollen from punching (someone? Something? Both?) and his eyes are swollen from tears and maybe it would be better if this dreamlike world was an abyss to just swallow him in its void and grant him release from his troubles.

He can make out the outline of another person a few hundred yards away—he does not want to be seen like this, but then again if it isn't real then who cares? His footsteps are loud enough to disturb the person as they draw nearer and an unfamiliar face turns toward him.

It's a boy around his age; his lip curls up at one end in a sort of sneer (although his eyes are soft; perhaps his face is perpetually frozen in this kind of expression) and he looks lost, not in the way that he's alone in a misty field but in the way Tatsuya is, unable to recall anything and alone with uncomfortable feelings and thoughts.

"Hello," he says.

"Hello," says Tatsuya.

After a few seconds Tatsuya sits down beside him. The boy actually looks more morose than lost as he picks at his shoe. The silence isn't too awkward; this kind of atmosphere isn't one that's supposed to be filled with voices (and Tatsuya feels like his might crack).

"Hey, do you know martial arts breathing?" says the boy.

Tatsuya blinks. "No."

The boy shrugs. "You're breathing hard. I could teach you."

He stares at Tatsuya; he doesn't want to be refused. Tatsuya doesn't want to refuse—he doesn't want or need to be around people, let alone strangers, right now, but he also wants to calm his racing heartbeat and slow his body down. Here, where he can't even remember very much about himself, where the air is crisp and there's no smog in sight, might be the perfect place to learn to breathe.

* * *

He wakes up face-down in the pillow; his breathing has slowed and he can't remember more than a vague feeling, the image of mist and the way he'd breathed in deeply, the way the flowers (were there flowers or was it just grass and the mist under a particular slant of the sun?) had slowed in their swaying and it had seemed like there was something someday that he could do, that the weight on his shoulder could crumble away or be shaken off and he wouldn't be trapped forever. The hope fades as he sits up, pulling the sleeves of his sweater down over his hands. He's fucked things up with Taiga for good; his knuckles are red and he feels like crying and hiding but his throat is hoarse and there's nowhere to go and hide because he's already in his favorite hiding spot and there's nowhere safer, no one he can go to (not that he particularly wants to deal with people who ask too many questions and even one is too many right now) so he slumps over and tries to remember how to breathe.

* * *

He returns to the field a few months later; the grass is parched and yellowed on the end from drought and the flowers have wilted. Tatsuya himself has withered in the heat; he can't quite gather in his thoughts what has been happening to him, only bits of anxiety, of turning the corner and hoping he doesn't run into someone, of sticking his head down and his shoulders down, but the reason he does that in the first place isn't the reason his arms are dark with bruises instead of a tan; his physical aches are entirely separate from the emotional ones.

The other boy is here again, too; he is blowing on a dandelion and sweat runs down his brow; his sneer looks more deliberate this time. He swears at the dandelion as the seeds cling to it and tosses it away; it drifts down into the sickly grass and almost seems to dissolve.

"Hello," says Tatsuya.

"Oh," says the other boy, expression immediately shifting into a different gear.

Tatsuya drops into a sitting position beside him. The air is dry but it's so damn hot that soon he's sweating, too; it's too achingly hot to talk or even do anything. The other boy seems like he's spacing out, thinking about something else—he doesn't seem as upset as he did the last time. Tatsuya supposes he's not as upset either, either that or he's in a constant state of heightened anxiety and has gotten used to it. He sighs.

"Am I dreaming?"

The other boy blinks. "I don't know. I think I am…but you know how they say you only see people you've seen before in dreams?"

"No," says Tatsuya.

"I would have remembered you."

Tatsuya laughs. "Maybe you saw my face in a crowd and invented a personality for me; maybe that's why I don't remember anything."

"I can't either, but…" his voice trails off and he stares into the distance again.

"But?"

"But I don't really want to. Whatever it is, I need an escape."

* * *

The next time he visits it's late autumn at dusk; the grass is dying and there's a crisp chill in the air. This place is farther north than he is; it must belong to the other boy. He might feel bad about invading other people's dreams if he had any control—and he'd really rather possess someone else's mind than have them in his.

"You're beautiful."

Tatsuya turns around; it's the boy, standing far away and crossing his arms in the breeze. He would usually feel uncomfortable with this sentence, wouldn't he? The words reverberate inside his mind and he recalls fawning girls, boys who whisper similar sentences and start fights with him that he doesn't feel like finishing but at this boy's words his fingers relax and his palms open and he smiles—it's not a compliment on something he's worked for but that's how the boy means him and Tatsuya can't quite begrudge him this, somehow.

"Thank you."

"You look…calmer."

"I'm always calm."

The boy laughs and Tatsuya fixes his gaze on him. It's an honest laugh; he's an honest person; he's too good—the thought screams itself in Tatsuya's brain but he does not let himself think it. This is a dream. Dream boys are not subject to the same low standards as real boys within Tatsuya's grasp; he can spend the waking hours questioning why this boy just might be attracted to him (or it might just be a context thing that Tatsuya's somewhat-limited experience with the Japanese language hasn't covered) if he manages to remember it when he wakes up—but Tatsuya has always been good at lying to himself. He tucks a lock of hair behind his hair, relishing the way the boy's eyes stick to his hand like gum on the sidewalk.

* * *

They meet again in early spring; this time the field is empty other than a full-sized asphalt basketball court, erected out of nothing—the wildlife bends around it in almost a reverence; a ball sits on the near free-throw line.

It rolls off Tatsuya's fingers more smoothly than any ever has, than any basketball should—but he likes it, the way the sound of the ball against the floor dies away in the stillness and wideness of this prairie. He experimentally dribbles up and down, puts in a few layups. It would be nice if there was someone to play with; as if in an answer to his casual request he hears a shout.

"You play, too?"

The boy looks genuinely excited; Tatsuya passes him the ball and he looks down at it in surprise.

Tatsuya scores on him twice before he finds his rhythm, steals and drives past him with sheer force, laying down a clean dunk. Tatsuya smiles; something inside him settles—he doesn't feel bored and doesn't feel threatened by the enormity of the boy's talent, either. The ball seems to sing off his fingers as he runs in and gets off a perfect fadeaway from the left side; the boy nearly blocks it but it's fine—that's not nearly the last gun in Tatsuya's arsenal, and he's pretty sure the other boy's got plenty of tricks left, too.

* * *

Shuu's hand is cool in his own; they've known each other for a few hours but it feels like it's been much longer than that, and the way Shuu is looking at him is somewhat off, too—he doesn't have a baseline, though, does he? There's nothing to measure this against other than his own vague feelings. He wants to trace that mouth, curling up at the end, with his finger; he wants to say this isn't just an ordinary fleeting attraction and maybe it's not; maybe he's learned too much of Shuu already to let him go without a fight at this point but there's something still, something that's not Shuu's father's illness or the way they fought together (he has never fought alongside anyone quite this easily; of this he can be sure) or even the natural flow of their conversation. Maybe it's related to those; maybe it isn't—there's some sort of undercurrent and he can't figure it out; it's too far beneath and the water of their relationship (if it can be called that at this point) is too murky to see their own feet.

* * *

And then Shuu kisses him and suddenly he remembers clearly, fields and cool breezes and gazes and words and voices, the comfort of isolated togetherness, collapsing in a heap under the basketball hoop together, hands tangled in the grass and pulling it up by the roots, the dandelion tossed from Shuu's fingers and disappearing, the tangle of emotions on Shuu's face.

His arms encircle Shuu's waist tighter; here they are real and here they remember everything and here he will never let this boy go.


End file.
